My mom issued a challenge to her customers: Create a card to commiserate broken bones, a major operation, stubbed toe, hangnails, or the like. Under the weather cards do not count.

That is a challenge! I don’t have any SU stamps that would really work for that. Thankfully Pick a Petal is on my design todo list for June. Since I had it out, this concept sorta threw itself at me. It is for a broken heart.

I added some uplifting wording on the inside – though many many other options presented themselves too. I hope I never have to send such a card, but I do like how it turned out!

This is a card I created for Mom’s May stamp camp. Her requirements were to use Lovely as a Tree to make a masculine card. I also knew that a customer had requested a card using glossy paper. So I decided to add that in too. I really like how the reverse masking and resist turned out. The final touch was to add the sentiment.

I unmount my stamps. I love using my stamps unmounted. Early on I realized that it would be helpful to mark the backs with an arrow showing which way was up. So far, that hasn’t failed me, but today….it did. I had marked the “Happy” form Happy Everything upside down! That particular stamp drives me nuts and I really should have stamped it before I used it, but since the back was marked, I thought I was good to go.

Oh well, live and learn (and re-mark!).

This card is for an upcoming InkUp stamp camp. Mom wanted a kid card, so I made a Parade of Bugs waterfall card. I used the SCS Tutorial for the waterfall technique. I think this turned out cute – I love how you can see each of the buggys’ faces!

If you missed my other Garden Elements cards I made with the Roof Garden Accents and Elements kit, make sure you check out part 1 and part 2.

First up is a simple card with lots of details. I wanted to use the great big flower from the Elements kit, but it was so big and plain. I decided to emboss the Kindred Spirits stamp set onto it. I liked it, but the shine wasn’t noticeable enough, so I sanded it down. I really liked those results! I added a Kiwi circle and a Navy button. I drew some dots on the button with a white gel pen. To finish the accent off I added some tiny satin ribbon .

The stitching around the DSP layer is faux stitching. Since sanding the EP off the flower made the flower edges distressed, I used the SU Cutter Kit to distress the edges of the DSP panel too.

This is the final card I want to show you. I was going for a mod graphic type design. I’m not sure what I ended up with, lol. I added the large leafy Element to the Kiwi cardstock. It needed something else so I outlined it with Not Quite Navy. It still didn’t seem right, so I overstamped the Element with the En Francais background stamp. I decided I wouldn’t do any more to that!

I love stripes, so the stripey paper from the Urban Garden DSP pack needed to be used and I thought it would go well with whatever it was I was doing on this card. The final step was to add the sentiment. I knew I wanted it to overlap the leafy Element, so I anchored it to the stripey strip with some brads.

Well, I hope you enjoyed these cards. I only used ONE THIRD of the contents of a kit – so they are definitely a value! Of course, there aren’t any other Accent and Element kits in the new catalog, bummer – but if you are like me, you have one in your stash

If you missed the first three cards I made with the Roof Garden Accents and Elements kit, make sure you check out yesterday’s post.

This first card was fun to make. I found some cool geometric paper within the Urban Garden DSP pack. I thought the wavy lines from the Elements kit worked well with that. I decided I wanted a big focal sentiment and created one using Elegant Greetings and Fundamental Phrases. I offset the sentiment and left room to add a leafy Element. I popped the leaves up and added a little detail with the white gel pen.

This is another of my favorites. When I saw the daisy paper from the Urban Garden DSP, I just knew I needed to use it. I’ve been ogling mom’s Top Note die cut so I grabbed that too. I used taffeta ribbon to hide the seem of the cardstock and pattern paper. Next time I will trim off the pointy parts from the die cut so the ribbon lays better. I popped a couple flowers over the ribbon.

So, using the daisy portion of the patten paper in the above card left some great wavy lines behind in the scrap pile. I thought they would make a cool border. Again I used dimensionals to pop the flowers up. For the sentiment, I used the corner rounder and tucked it under the border.

That is all for today. I have two more cards to post – some come back tomorrow to check them out. Thanks for stopping by!

Mom’s January stamping event was a new catalog party. One of the things she did was to give away a Roof Garden Accent and Elements kit. She asked me to make some samples using the tin so the person who won would have some ideas. I ended up making 8 cards! I’ll post a few today, a few tomorrow, and the last couple on Wednesday. The three I have today are all CASEd, but the posts for Tuesday and Wednesday will be mine.

The first card was cased from luv my dolly (SCS). I changed the elements and sentiment used, and added a rhinestone brad to the flower center. What I CASEd was the overall layout and colors – I really love the smaller panel with the scallop edge and the idea of layering a flower over a strip.

My next card is one of my favorites! It just feels so formal and crisp. I again cased the layout from luv my dolly (SCS). To do the ribbon, I punched a little slot in the focal panel and threaded the ribbon up and made my knot. Also, I didn’t want the leaf sticker to be flat, so I cut a dimensional up into pieces and placed a few under the leaves to give that piece some dimension.

 
 
The final card (for today) is cased from stampin mama (SCS). I used the layout, but changed up the colors and the elements used to decorate the sentiment. This isn’t the best picture, but it is the best I have – the ribbon is Kiwi.

Don’t forget to come back tomorrow to see three more cards made with the Roof Garden Accents and Elements kit!

I really love the Stampin’Up! St. Patty set – Pinch Proof. I made this card for one of mom’s upcoming stamp camps. We used this set last year, so I wanted to use the other images from the set. I also wanted the card to be useable even if the person didn’t want to send it for St. Patrick’s Day.

Many of the cards in the February camp use a square, so instead of making another, I turned it a bit and made it a diamond. After stamping, I added a rhinestone for a bit of fun. I popped it up on dimensionals so that the ribbon could be threaded behind the image. The clover in the background is stamped with Versamark – the Kiwi ink was too dark.

Since I am moving at the end of the year, I wanted to make sure my work projects for Mom were done early. These cards will be the projects for the October Stamp Camp. The cards are (1) Fall Friend, (2) Thank You (complement card to the bookmark), (3) Bookmark, (4) Christmas, and (5) Halloween. We don’t normally do 3D items during regular stamp camps, but with Christmas coming up, we wanted to show an easy gift idea. The bookmark was done at SU Convention this year.

The final card for the September stamp camp uses Pocket Silhouettes – a new set that is also on special! Since our theme is “Get Ready for the Holidays” I wanted to go with a thank you card in fall colors. I tried a couple other things first (see below), but this is what I settled on. I really like it – a quick card, but still has dimension. After working on the other samples, getting to this place wasn’t hard – the left over circles from the other attempts were scattered on my desk and it was easy to envision this card.

After I made the final stamp camp card, I wanted to finish the cards I had started. I gave them up for different reasons, but I am very happy I went back and finished them!

My first attempt was to use the chipboard frame piece as a template to create the window, behind which the silhouettes can be seen. I tried many different things, but everything that I could think of to “finish” the card required non-SU stuff. I gave up. When I came back to it, I pulled out a tiny Prima flower in red and added a black brad, which made me think of this scrap of ribbon I had. Now, I know if I tried harder, I probably could have accomplished this card using SU supplies, so giving up was more of a lack of mojo!

This spotlight card was another attempt. I really liked where it was going, but it was getting too complicated. We try not to do too many layers, especially when the layers are only 1/16″ bigger, lol. It seems that even when all you have to do is tape the layers together, it takes too long. I love the color palette on this one (that sorta carried over to the final card, but with the brown taking such a smaller part in this card, it feels lighter). The green layer on this is the new Kiwi Kiss. Since SU doesn’t make brads for their InColors (I don’t know WHY?!!), I had to improvise. I found these Making Memory brads weren’t too off so I went with them.

This is another stamp camp card for September. The theme of the September camp is “Get Ready for the Holidays”. Our goal is to have all the cards fit the theme, and if we get creative enough – they do For instance, this card is a thoughtful card, and thoughtfulness is sorta like thanking, which goes with the idea of Thanksgiving, right? Yeah, its a stretch, but we gotta use the stamps we have on hand and neither of us has a “thanksgiving” set that isn’t retired!